Part 2: Changing Times
Chapter 9: Rumia (I)
The recent weeks in both Gensokyo and Makai had been remarkably uneventful. Especially in light of the fact that there were now two separate Rumias living in Makai, thanks to the efforts of Yukari Yakumo, and the earnest request of the 'good' Rumia.
The so-called 'evil' Rumia had returned to Makai first, where she subsequently isolated herself in the remote regions of the demon world with Kana. The two hadn't been seen in Gensokyo at all since then, and even Shinki knew little of where the two had secluded themselves off to, or what they were doing with themselves.
The other Rumia, who eventually decided to go by the name 'Rumi', in order to differentiate herself, still remained at Pandaemonium with Shinki. Although she had not ventured into Gensokyo on more than a few occasions herself, the separation of the two Rumias had become relatively common knowledge. While the people of Gensokyo, Reimu and Miasma being among the most vocal of these, were apprehensive about the existence of two Rumias, all of them were happy to be free of the 'evil' Rumia's presence for the time being.
Almost a month had passed since Gensokyo had been restored to its proper state by The Voidborn, and life slowly returned to normal. For the many that had not encountered Rumia personally, or who knew nothing of either Lilith or The Voidborn, it was as though nothing had happened at all, compared to the usual string of incidents that were common in a land like Gensokyo.
Despite this carefree change of mood that had taken hold, Rumia had not simply vanished from existence, as many had hoped. She still resided in the darkest depths of Makai, concealed from even Shinki's prying eyes by the combined magic of Kana's and her own. It was there that the two had built a makeshift home for themselves, with Kana prying apart many of the ruined buildings out of the abandoned areas of Makai to use in the construction of their so-called house. The end result was, unsurprisingly, a complete mess of a building that fit quite in line with Kana's usual tastes. It wasn't entirely unlike what she had done to Shinki's fortress, just on a smaller scale.
Kana's initial overjoyed reaction to Rumia's return, and the subsequent excitement that she'd put into the construction of their residence, had been enough to keep things interesting for the first few days. With nothing else to occupy her time, however, Rumia rapidly slipped into a state of utter boredom.
With recent events still fresh in mind, another 'just for fun' murderous rampage was entirely out of the question. Reimu and her friends were on to Rumia's abilities by now, and would be fully capable of grouping together to stop her, should it come down to that. And, of course, she would run the risk of a repeat appearance by The Voidborn. Rumia doubted that she would be quite so generous a second time around.
Ultimately, the knowledge of her own defeat had been equally discouraging. Like Reimu and the few others that had been privy to knowledge of The Voidborn and the true history of events, Rumia had memories of both instances of her 'final battle'; two histories in which she had either been killed or defeated in battle. Her desire for revenge had waned, and she felt stagnated in her boredom. As a result, she'd spent the most recent several weeks doing little more than passing the time either terrifying the occasional stray Makai demon that came too close to her territory (and even this grew boring after the first week), or killing the day away with mindlessly depraved sex with Kana.
"This place is a fucking bore," Rumia remarked, after one such session. The two were lying in their bed (which, like most of their possessions, had been stolen from elsewhere in Makai) in relative silence since they had finished, when Rumia had spoken up.
"You sure didn't seem bored a minute ago.~" Kana replied, lifting her head up from Rumia's chest, which she'd been resting against. "If you got any rougher we might've needed to steal a new bed.~"
"You're the one who broke the first two by throwing them off the roof. Idiot." Kana responded to this by nuzzling her cheek against Rumia's. "Stop that."
"No.~"
"I hate you," Rumia grunted out.
"You do not.~" Kana did stop nonetheless at this point, and instead sat up on top of the other woman, straddling her waist. "We could go again, if it makes you feel better.~"
"You'd just make a bigger mess. I told you to stop using the chocolate syrup in bed." Kana shrugged her shoulders, as carefree as ever. Rumia merely glared.
"Well, fine! Grumpy butt. What do you want to do?" Kana asked, as she flopped forward, back onto Rumia's chest.
"Something other than just wasting our time here doing nothing." Even had she been able to do so freely, Rumia wasn't particularly feeling the desire for another rampage. If she'd wanted to do that, there was an entire outside world at her disposal, and she doubted there were many outside of Gensokyo that could even come close to her level of strength. She would be relatively unopposed. For that some reason though, the outside world would just be equally boring. "Leaving Makai and Gensokyo would just be a waste of time. I doubt there's anything out there worth the effort of finding."
"Well..." Kana started, drifting off into her own little world of thought. She remained silent for coming up on a full minute, and Rumia had just begun to think that Kana had spaced out completely, before she finally spoke again. "We should go back to Gensokyo! We could just go around and mess with people, like I used to do to Reimu when I'd go possess her shrine.~"
"Oh, really now...? You never told me this," Rumia said, her interest now sufficiently piqued. "Mm... tormenting Reimu does sound like it could be interesting. It's not really causing trouble if I'm not actually trying to murder her, now is it~?"
"Of course not! I used to do that sorta thing all the time, and no one ever really cared.~" Although Kana casually left out the fact that Reimu had tried to violently exorcise her from the Hakurei Shrine on numerous occasions, but who was counting? Certainly not Kana.
"Oh, then what the hell are we waiting around here for?" Rumia licked her lips as she sat up, inadvertently sending Kana sprawling off the bed. Kana simply fell off with a careless smile, and drifted up into the air before she'd hit the floor.
"Dunno! I got this though, don't worry.~" Kana conjured up a small orb of Void energy in her hand, which she tossed into the air, generating a small portal through which the two could pass through. "Well come on, let's go~!" Kana said, grasping Rumia's hand, as the two were then whisked away through the portal she'd created.
- o - o - o - o - o - o - o - o - o - o -
While Gensokyo's current state of relative peace (which was in recent days broken only by that troublesome Seija Kijin) may have been boring to the likes of Rumia and Kana, it was entirely welcome to the rest of its residents. Even before Rumia's unsealing, Gensokyo had just been coming off of a long string of incidents that had been (mostly inadvertently) caused by the appearance of the Moriya Shrine. Rumia's rampage, as awful as it was, had at least marked the end of the long period of turmoil.
Sanae and the gods of the Moriya Shrine were especially grateful for this. If anything good were to come out of it, Sanae thought, as she finished carrying in her supplies from the Human Village, Rumia would have at least mitigated the slightly negative reputation that the Moriya Shrine had gained since its arrival. With things having calmed down, Kanako had even considered renewing talks with the kappa about trying to remodel the underground nuclear reactor. Despite Kanako's best efforts at trying to work with Utsuho, her efforts at generating efficient amounts of energy from the reactor had been unsuccessful.
With everything she'd brought in now put away into the shrine's storage, Sanae only then realized how late in the day it was. The sky had taken on the darkened gray color of winter evenings, and would soon sink into cold blackness. Whether she'd been restored by Lilith (as Sanae actually remembered it), or by The Voidborn, it seemed that the winter spirit Letty Whiterock was keen on making up for lost time by making it an especially harsh, if late, winter.
Sanae had in fact been informed of the true course of events by Reimu shortly after they had happened (along with Miasma, Alice, and Youmu, who all vowed to keep their silence), and had found it completely unbelievable. Even now, she wasn't sure how much of Reimu's story she actually believed, but it had been backed up by both Marisa and Akyuu, who tried to assure her of Reimu's sincerity on the matter. Sanae hadn't even told Kanako or Suwako about this, not even all these weeks later. She thought they'd be even less likely to believe Reimu's story about The Voidborn than she herself had been, and would thus be less likely to keep it secret.
Sanae shook these thoughts from her mind as she walked back toward the shrine proper, bracing herself against the cold gusts of wind that plagued the upper reaches of Youkai Mountain. The close proximity of the Wind God's Lake only made the wind all the more chilling. She just hoped she wouldn't freeze to death up here before she could warm back up inside the shrine.
"Lady Kanako! Lady Suwako! I'm back!" Sanae called into the shrine, shutting the door tightly to shut out the cold air behind her. "I'll be in to prepare dinner shortly!" Though even as she said this, she could have sworn she could hear the sounds of people from within the kitchen. They really must have been impatient, if they were going so far as to try and cook for themselves. Not that the gods needed to eat, but that hardly seemed to stop them.
"Well, well.~ Welcome back, little shrine maiden," came the mocking voice that Sanae now knew all too well. A pair of arms draped over Sanae's shoulders, locking loosely around her neck as the body attached to them pressed up against her from behind. Rumia's face peered at Sanae from beside her head as the youkai leaned in, and the other woman grinned, flashing that dangerously sharp smile of hers.
"R... Rumia!? What the hell are you doing here!?" Sanae exclaimed, while trying to free herself from Rumia's grasp, to no avail. Rumia's grip was relaxed, but she was still far stronger than Sanae.
Rumia rolled her eyes, before her gaze briefly darted in the direction of the commotion coming from the kitchen. "Well we were trying to go to the Hakurei Shrine," Rumia explained, "but it seems that Kana has no sense of direction."
"Well it's not my fault that little Voidling I asked directions from didn't know the difference between shrines!" Kana replied, her voice issuing from the kitchen. She was then interrupted by a defiant sound from Suwako, before both drowned out by the sound of several glass dishes shattering on the floor.
"We wouldn't have needed directions if you'd just let me take us there myself!" Rumia shouted back with a distinct growl. In her moment of distraction, however, Sanae was able to duck down out of Rumia's locked arms, and freed herself.
"W-why the hell are you naked!?" Sanae shuddered with revulsion, realizing that Rumia had in fact been pressed up naked against her for that entire time. When she'd gotten free of Rumia's grip, she got a closer look at the darkness youkai's body than she'd probably ever wanted. Her body had only been materialized from the hips upward; the rest of her legs were hidden away somewhere else by the swirling fog-like darkness with which she used to teleport around. But from what part of the woman's body Sanae could see, before she averted her eyes, she wasn't adorned with even a single article of clothing. Even if under normal circumstances, Sanae could have considered a woman with Rumia's well-formed body attractive, she could only feel appalled just wondering how long the youkai had been strutting about nude in her shrine.
Rumia looked down at herself in response to Sanae's question, as though only aware for the very first time that she'd left Makai without any clothing, and simply shrugged her shoulders. "Didn't feel like getting dressed, I suppose."
"Get the hell out of my shrine, you shameless excuse for a poltergeist!" Kanako's voice bellowed, followed by a bright burst of danmaku from the kitchen, as well as Suwako's scream as she must have been caught in the other goddess's attack.
A moment later, out flew Kana from the kitchen, who was about as equally clothed as her companion, with a trail of possessed cooking supplies trailing behind her. Kanako stormed out from the kitchen only a few seconds later, before she was clocked in the head by a large pot, flung by the laughing poltergeist. With the goddess momentarily stunned, Kana flew defensively behind Rumia, giggling like a child. "Do you think she's mad about what we did in her room~?"
"Oh, definitely," Rumia answered, grinning wickedly back at both Sanae and Kanako now. "Maybe we shouldn't tell them what I did to you in Sanae's old school girl uniform."
"Y-you two did..." It didn't take much for Sanae to put two and two together, to realize just what the hell Rumia meant. Whether or not the two had actually done such a thing didn't matter, because Sanae fell for it either way. "Ew...! Why!?"
"Just because we felt like it.~" Kana leaned over Rumia's shoulder, and stuck her tongue out at Sanae. "What're you gonna do, stop us~?"
Sanae cringed all over again. Just the mental image of Kana, dressed in her old school uniform from the outside world, as Rumia... she couldn't even bear to finish the thought without the disgust welling back up inside her. "We stopped you last time!" Sanae responded, not quite looking either of them in the eye, though she did have her hands reaching for her gohei, and several sealing charms. "And, besides... you wouldn't want... that to happen again... r-right...?"
Kanako, who had no knowledge of The Voidborn, did not seem to know what Sanae was alluding to, but it seemed that both Rumia and Kana understood perfectly. "But we haven't tried to kill anyone this time, now have we?" Rumia answered, and of course, she was technically correct. "We just got so bored in Makai, we thought it might be more fun to play around with the people in Gensokyo."
"You're all a such a bunch of stiff, grumpy losers, that we thought Gensokyo could use some lightening up.~" Kana added, now locking her arms around Rumia's waist affectionately, and squeezing them tightly. "And here we are, trying to be friendly, and make amends for everything that happened. But you all just shut us out.~" Kana gave Rumia a pleading look, one that Sanae wouldn't have believed in the slightest. "Oh Rumia, how could they be so cruel to us~?"
"Perhaps they're simply jealous. We show up, having all the fun, and don't even offer to invite them. How do you think we would feel?"
"Oh, well of course!" Kana said, lightly bonking herself on the head. "Why don't you go have fun with the two gods, and I'll take the cute little shrine maiden~?"
"W-what!? Don't even joke about that sort of thing!" Sanae said, stepping backwards until she reached the very back wall of the shrine's main room.
"Oh, that sounds like a great idea, Kana," Rumia said, both of them effectively ignoring Sanae's pleas. Rumia turned her gaze over toward Kanako, who fixed the dark youkai with a violent glare. "I bet I'd have no problem handling a pair of goddesses all by myself."
"I'd sooner burn this shrine to the ground than let you touch me, you filthy demon," Kanako growled out, standing at her full height now, which easily towered over both Rumia and Kana, who were both shorter than even Sanae.
"Well now, wouldn't that be a sight? You probably wouldn't even have the chance." Kanako did not respond to Rumia's challenge. Perhaps because, of course, burning down her own shrine would've been absurd. But also, it seemed she knew that Rumia completely outmatched her, after seeing the damage she'd caused at the Hakurei Shrine, and from hearing first-hand accounts from Sanae about the battle in Makai.
Rumia glared down at Kanako for a moment longer, practically daring her to react, before her smiled faded back into Rumia's usual moody scowl. "Come on, Kana. I'm sick of this place now, anyway," Rumia snapped her fingers (ultimately a needless gesture), and her clothes rematerialized on her body out of the darkness. "Let's go find someone else to toy with.~"
"Aw, we're leaving already?" Kana gaped at Rumia, clear disappointment spread across her features. "Oh, fine! But you owe me later, Rumia dear." Kana wrapped both of her arms around Rumia's left one, her still bare chest pressing up against it. She gave a teasing little wave back at Sanae with the hand closest to her. "But I think I'll be back to pay you a visit, cutie.~"
With that last threatening promise, both Rumia and Kana vanished into the shadows, leaving Sanae and the goddesses of the Moriya Shrine safe once again. The rest of Gensokyo, however, was still unaware of the new wave of mischievous horror that awaited them in the upcoming weeks. The Moriya Shrine had been only the first of many places that would come to be targeted by the devious duo of Rumia and Kana.